Committee Power, Leadership, and the Median Voter: Evidence from the Smoking Ban

Keith Krehbiel

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 1996, vol. 12, issue 1, 234-56

Abstract: In an intricate sequence of legislative decisions rich with implications for theories of collective choice, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1987 initiated a smoking ban on all domestic airline flights. Two previous studies--by LaRue and Rothenberg in 1992 and Shipan in 1995--analyzed and interpreted the case as supportive of institutional or committee-power theories. This study reanalyzes the case to assess specific instances of committee-power, leadership, and median-voter theories. Overall, the findings undermine Large and Rothenberg's support for gatekeeping-based committee power; they replicate and extend Shipan's refutation of the hypothesis that majority-party leaders are enforcers of pro-committee institutional arrangements; and they corroborate a variation of median-voter theory. The bulk of evidence is consistent with an unconventionally nonpartisan claim: that the House (analytically, its median voter) chooses and uses procedural arrangements such as its Rules Committee to limit the effective exercise of committee and leadership powers. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1996
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